Posted A Low Paying Optical Tech Job And Received 75 Applications In 24 Hours

[~bs]

kinda funny, singuy sounds like me. I probably would have said much of the same things. lol. and yeah, college degrees did mean a whole lot more 30-40 years ago, even degrees deemed "worthless" nowadays. When half the population now has a 2-4 year degree, all it means is that the minimum bar of education rose from high school to college. But like anything else in life, it's what you make of your opportunities and experiences.

[jenn_jenn]

When you view college as a vocational school, you are likely going to be disappointed.

This really sums it up. I wish more people realized this.

College was never intended as a pathway to a career for me. I spent my childhood essentially in a trade school. I easily could have walked into a career paying $100-$150 an hour and that was my plan.

I homeschooled most of my life and went to college because I desperately wanted the experience. I chose my degree because the subject interested me. Upon graduation, I had a choice between a BA or BS. I took the BA.

I then decided after 15 years of my life being this one thing that I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want to be a part of that community anymore and suddenly found myself looking for a job that was relative to my field of study.

I landed at a company with an employee population consisting almost exclusively of engineers. There was a culture that the engineers were the smart ones. I used to resent the implication that I was “less than” for having a BA. That I wasn’t as smart and wouldn’t make as much.

They didn’t know that at 13, I took all my math and science classes at the local college. I was acing multivariable calculus and tutoring students 10 years older than I was. My professors practically begged me to major in math but economics interested me more.

l quickly learned that people who judge others value or earning potential by their degrees or lack thereof usually aren’t the smartest people in the room. People take different paths for different reasons. There is plenty of earning potential for liberal arts degrees - and even people without degrees.

Your success is more dependent upon your discipline and work ethic than it is your degree.

[Captain Save]

Why don't we teach people about college the same way we teach about money? It goes hand in hand ... What is the R.O.I. on that major. I guess you can forego the money if people are truly enjoying these majors and careers but they rarely do what they want to do and they get deep in debt.

Again I want my kids to be set by 18 .. not that they'll have life together but that they can say I can try this field and go work in it and learn on the job to see how I can profit from it later. They will most likely fail but 5 years later they will be ahead of the kids getting out of college ..

College was a good thing for me but I came out with $15k debt and unfortunately I was not ready to make these decisions out of high school .. .and that falls in my parent's tunnel vision about school (though I admit it does help you focus on the task at hand)

[Captain Save]

it depends on what your definition of worthless is.

if improving your knowledge of whatever field you choose is your goal, then not worthless. If the goal is to use the degree to help you gain high paying jobs, then yeah might be worthless.

And yeah you may be better off going the no degree route and work your way up from the bottom. 4-5 years of full time job plus income, might be able to become a supervisor somewhere. You can save a ton of money living at home, possibly buy a house by the time the college kid is graduating with 100k in debt. Different routes for everyone, we all make our beds and lie in them.

We talk about alternatives in all parts of personal finance ... why not college. Yes you can gain knowledge in College ... but for how much? . How about an alternative, get a course to do it yourself and ESPECIALLY , learn the course while getting an entry level job in that field. Experience trumps book knowledge. It's not as turn key as college I admit.

You can get a financial advisor, pay a 1.25% AUM fee for your retirement account .. that is great when returns were 8-9% . but what about the alternative, get a DIY account at .25% fee learn more about investing especially when the market is looking more like a 5-7% return environment.

[TexasHusker]

We talk about alternatives in all parts of personal finance ... why not college. Yes you can gain knowledge in College ... but for how much? . How about an alternative, get a course to do it yourself and ESPECIALLY , learn the course while getting an entry level job in that field. Experience trumps book knowledge. It's not as turn key as college I admit.

You can get a financial advisor, pay a 1.25% AUM fee for your retirement account .. that is great when returns were 8-9% . but what about the alternative, get a DIY account at .25% fee learn more about investing especially when the market is looking more like a 5-7% return environment.

If your sole goal in life after high school is to earn a decent wage and nothing else, then learning a trade is a viable option. You can become a firefighter or police officer often in a year or less and earn a decent salary. College level coursework teaches critical thinking. If you desire to be a manager, administrator, physician, attorney, or some other professional, you will need what college teaches you. Yes, including Composition, History, Political Science, and Human Geography. You are not going to see even middle management without at least a Bachelors Degree these days. I was disqualified from consideration for a high level VP job simply because I didn't have my MBA. That's on me, not the company - I knew that was going to be an issue going in - rules of the game.

[scfr]

I still stand firmly. Don't go waste time in college to study trash majors. Your competition for a 12 dollar job is in the hundreds. It's actually very overwhelming for an employer to go through and a college degree doesn't mean jack when there are hundreds of applications to go through. We are now extremely picky and only contacted the select few who has actual optical tech experience because the demand is too high.

This may be true for someone who wishes to work FOR someone like you.

On the other hand, it is well-documented that, for the type of folks documented in books like The Millionaire Mind and The Next Millionaire Next Door, many of whom are entrepreneurial types who own businesses, TRAITS and HABITS are more important factors in determining financial success than college.